Goodbye ComputerGames.ro Forum

Bit sad to see it being closed down after 21 years. It’s been an important piece of early Romanian Internet communities, one where I’ve been part of the moderating team for the game development sub-forum and where I’ve made some friends (and some enemies) and eventually ended up working with a couple of them in game development.

Online friendships made there spilled irl and there were regular meetings, especially with forum members in larger cities like Bucharest.

Probably the best irl meeting was organized by the forum members from Tirgu Mures (Stunn, Raven and a couple of other people I can’t recall their handles), cca 2001. We gathered 20-something people from all corners of Romania, some travelled 6-7 hours by train, for a weekend of absolute madness, booze, bbq, live music and net parties. It was at one of these net parties that I’ve played Counterstrike for the first time 🙂

Early Internet was nothing short of awesome.

In remembrance of the good times, here’s a gift made for the 5th anniversary of the forum in 2004, the pixel people of CG.ro forum. I can’t remember publishing it, but found in my work folder and it revived memories. Very bad MSPaint pixel art, but a nod to characters I’ve met there that had an influence on the forum, in one way or another.

Silviu was the owner of ComputerGames, Adi[CG] and Peke were staff members, originally writers for the Computer Games magazine, Assassin was one of the forum admins, Mir was the mod and master of the hardware forum, Afantana and Johnny were writers for Game Over magazine, Masi was the eternally banned junior, Cowboy was an appreciator of BattleTech universe, Vulpitsa was the resident cooking guru. Can’t remember much of the others. If you see yourself in there, drop a shout.